2021 Volume 51 Issue 1 Pages 13-24
This paper aims to clarify the use of chord acoustic training practiced in Sakai City in the 1930s. Chord acoustic training was conducted for approximately 20,000 school children enrolled in 20 elementary schools from 1937 to 1939 under the guidance of the city school music director, Kichigoro Sato. In the elementary schools, children were systematically and intensively drilled in chord acoustic training. Chord whistles and small organs were used to make a better educational environment. The chord acoustic training model existed in two forms : the widely used general form relying on systematic and intensive drilling and a musically rich advanced form such as at Tonobaba Elementary School. Chord acoustic training in the 1930s showed a way for public education to expand from songs to music education, via the ideal of “kokumin-kaisho” (all of the people sing together). Insisted on by Sato was “equivalent to the expression of group training that would unite the purpose of the nation,” subsequently leading to the ambiguous logic in which music education and national defense education were united through chord acoustic training.
